The Dirties

Matt and Owen are best friends who decide to make a movie about standing up to the bullies at their school. What begins as an amateur filmmaking project in the spirit of a revenge comedy gradually becomes something more serious, as the boundary between what they are shooting and what they are actually doing starts to dissolve.

Matt Johnson directed and stars in this Canadian film, which he wrote with Evan Morgan; Morgan also produced alongside Johnson and Matthew Miller. It was the first feature Johnson directed, arriving a decade before BlackBerry and ahead of several 2026 releases. The cast includes Owen Williams, Krista Madison, Shailene Garnett, Jay McCarrol and Brandon Wickens, among 25 credited performers. The story blends comedy, crime and drama across a short 83-minute runtime.

On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 6.8 from roughly 8,800 votes, noticeably higher than its 6.4 on TMDB from a much smaller group of voters. The larger sample on IMDb suggests a reasonably steady, if modest, level of approval for this early entry in Johnson's filmography.